Really? Arena over Blood Scrivner? And this deck is screaming for Dark Ritual. That deck is too slow to dodge disruption, has no disruption of its own, and the sideboard is not good.
What would you recommend changing other than putting Blood Scrivener back and including Dark Ritual? Any sideboard suggestions and disruption card suggestions? My opponents mostly use tribal decks.
EDIT: Here's a budget revision. Could really use advice, not only in the main deck, but for the sideboard as well. Also, is there a substitute for Entomb? It's way too expensive for me right now.
@Thadan... Hymn To Tourach, Cabal Therapy, Innocent Blood... drop fast zombie beats and rip apart you foe's hand. And as a rule of thumb no spells over 3 mana.
I recently disassembled an existing deck and noticed i have the pieces to make some kind of zombie deck, the issue is I have no idea which was to go with this...
It's kind of suicide black zombies, but it has some serious consistency issues
the intention here is to beat face ASAP, but the deck has some issues... primarily I usually draw hands with either no creatures or 5+ land, and a lack of card draw, which I do not know how to fix (what do i take out for the new guy?)
the sideboard is essentially transformational- now i am cycling my kills spells! into a semi control thing, with the options of tossing spites at people
I just don't know if i should go full zombies or suicide black, and i have piles of fun looking zombies to mess with
in addition to the above, i have the leftover zombies and whatnot, to see what i can make of them (the totals include stuff on the above list):
Generally for lands, of it's not good enough for the MD, then it's not good enough for the SB.
About my 5th iteration of a Zombie deck. Using Jund colors for Lotleth Troll and SB of Abrupt Decay, red for burn. Aether Vial is just too good not to include in this deck, along with Skullclamp and Strip Mine.
A transformational sideboard to take care of opposing aggro decks and control decks. Extremely soft to combo. Midrange decks may still be in their favor preboard, but ours in the post. Putrid Imp gets rid of land cards to take advantage of Scrivener and can fly over the top, Troll is just a trampling beater that is hard to take care of. I included reanimate to help with the loss of creatures to troll and to bring back Gravecrawler on an empty board, or to kill creatures with Fleshbag. Entomb and Bridge is awesome and makes for some serious CA with Clamp. I wanted to include Strip Mine just because. Probably THE worst thing in this build, due to color requirements. I thought about using Life From the Loam somehow for a land lock out, but couldn't fit it. The lands are the way they are because they are ported from my Legacy deck, The Walking Dead, but if I could switch the numbers with Badlands and Bayou I would.
There are some cards that seems not to fit in the deck like Polluter (that with the sacrifice theme, odds are that you won't have much creatures out), Shephard of Rot (same reason as Polluter + that as you're the slow side of the table, and chances are that you will be behind on the life race, so using him might be a non go).
Soullless One might be your beater, but with all that sac, Feeder or Husk should be huge, so i'd prefer to use a evasion enabler like Zombie Master + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, or Zombie Trailblazer, to allow some pumped dead head to beat to death opponent, since beater won't be a missing slot.
Finally, you might like to use Vengeful Dead, since it fits here, as an alternative wincon.
Nice choice with Oversold Cemetery, i'd even drop muse and up this to 3.
Duress and Smother are a nice, and mostly necessary, touch.
W. Wretch seems more a meta call to me, its is useless against decks that will not deal with their grave, like most. I feel that a Butcher Ghoul would have more use to you on the 2cmc spot. 2x1 kills and/or pump.
My friend got a deck that he makes you sacrifice all your creatures. Doing it by Grave Pact, with Carrion Feeder, he sacrifice Bloodghast or Cravecrawler and keep returning them to the battlefield. Running Blood Artist to gain life also.
I have a few cards I wanna make a zombie deck with for casual games, I have Trepanation Blade, cellar door, Death Baron, and maybe black cat. Any thing I can add? I wanna make a zombie over run or something around there.
@Thadan - I can't really see where you're aiming at, you have:
Sac theme with killing wave and tragic slip, but only messenger and gravecrawler to sort of benefit from it, making gempalm less effective.
At the same time you have a token production package that will die for killing wave, and will make shepherd of rot unusable, at the risk of killing yuorself in the process.
Dark Ritual has no real usage, and Soulless One suffers from absence of evasion or trampling, which means even a mere 1/1 token could stop a gigantic Soulless.
I believe the first goal here is to choose which route you want to take with the deck: sacrifice, lifeloss, aggro, or control. After that which creatures (inside the strategy) you would really want on it (fun factor).
That answered, will be easier to help you.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Now i lay you, down to rest, you'll never be more than second best" (Megadeth)
Green is not really mentioned on the primer beacuse, in my opinion, there are no valuable zombie cards on that colors that worth mentioning so far. Even so, that won't stop me from helping you.
Ditch: Diregraf Ghoul, Putrid Leech, Geralf's Messenger and Cemetery Reaper (you plan to beef Feeder and Troll to beat), and add some of the cards above, all will provide you some benefit on discarding for troll.
In that case you can use Buried Alive or use another discard outlet like 3 Putrid Imp + 4 Haakon.
Use 4 Haakon since you'll want it in your hand every game, and you can discard all 4, just can't cast more than 1.
You won't loose consistency because you'll have a nice cmc curve with threat drop on every turn.
Recently stumbled onto this thread after looking for a way to make some sort of suicide black deck somewhat competent in today's meta....
Alas I felt WotC has turned black into a support color but then after play testing some of these zombies deck, it inspired new hope for me (Goodjob on the Primer!)
So the idea was to take a previous black deck I had and kinda just keep the discard shell and insert the creatures. I tried to keep the curve somewhat consistent and max out around 3cc but is that the right call?
Is it worth expanding to 4cc?
Should I toss in more lords? like death baron? I like the guy but I feel it may be possible to end the game before death touch becomes a necessity
O btw this deck is for casual use
Would it be wrong to toss in a singleton of necropotence just for the those times you can get into the play turn 1
Nice list, but wow, that looks a bit stronger than casual.
Thanks! Relentless Dead made the deck a lot better.
I think it's fun to play against aggro and control and even to some extent in multiplayer,
but too slow and not enough disruptive versus combo, hence casual.
4 Bayou
4 Woodland Cemetery
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Unholy Grotto
3 Bojuka Bog
// Creatures
4 Geralf's Messenger
4 Gravecrawler
4 Slitherhead
3 Lotleth Troll
3 Diregraf Ghoul
2 Death Baron
2 Zombie Master
1 Skullbriar, the Walking Grave
3 Recurring Nightmare
4 Abrupt Decay
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Sign in Blood
4 Sheltering Word
4 Naturalize
4 Dark Ritual
3 Dreg Mangler
"If there is such a thing as too much power, I have not discovered it."
--Volrath
BGBGBGBGBGBGBGBGBGBGBGB
What would you recommend changing other than putting Blood Scrivener back and including Dark Ritual? Any sideboard suggestions and disruption card suggestions? My opponents mostly use tribal decks.
EDIT: Here's a budget revision. Could really use advice, not only in the main deck, but for the sideboard as well. Also, is there a substitute for Entomb? It's way too expensive for me right now.
4 Blood Scrivener
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Gempalm Polluter
4 Geralf's Messenger
4 Gravecrawler
4 Shepherd of Rot
3 Soulless One
// SPELLS
2 Army of the Damned
4 Dark Ritual
3 Endless Ranks of the Dead
4 Killing Wave
4 Tragic Slip
4 Barren Moor
12 Swamp
3 Unholy Grotto
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 Contamination
4 Duress
3 Noxious Ghoul
4 Zombie Infestation
It's kind of suicide black zombies, but it has some serious consistency issues
4 Sarcomancy
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Stromgald Crusader
4 Nantuko Shade
2 Gempalm Polluter
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Duress
4 Go for the Throat
4 Dark Ritual
18 Swamp
3 Unholy Grotto
4 Nameless Inversion
1 gempalm polluter
3 fleshbag marauder
2 Demonic Consultation
2 Kearvek's Spite
the intention here is to beat face ASAP, but the deck has some issues... primarily I usually draw hands with either no creatures or 5+ land, and a lack of card draw, which I do not know how to fix (what do i take out for the new guy?)
the sideboard is essentially transformational- now i am cycling my kills spells! into a semi control thing, with the options of tossing spites at people
I just don't know if i should go full zombies or suicide black, and i have piles of fun looking zombies to mess with
in addition to the above, i have the leftover zombies and whatnot, to see what i can make of them (the totals include stuff on the above list):
4 carnophage
4 sign in blood
4 demonic consultation
3 Unbreathing horde
4 skullclamp
4 fleshbag marauder
3 Kearvek's spite
4 gempalm marauder
4 shepherd of rot
4 Geth's Verdict
4 Snuff Out
2 lashwrithe
4 phyrexian arena
1 necropotence
in addition to the above, i am willing to spend a maximum of 10 dollars to complete this project.
What do y'all suggest?
About my 5th iteration of a Zombie deck. Using Jund colors for Lotleth Troll and SB of Abrupt Decay, red for burn. Aether Vial is just too good not to include in this deck, along with Skullclamp and Strip Mine.
4 Putrid Imp
4 Blood Scrivener
4 Lotleth Troll
3 Death Baron
1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
1 Geralf's Messenger
3 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Gempalm Polluter
4 Aether Vial
2 Lightning Bolt
1 Entomb
1 Reanimate
4 Skullclamp
1 Bridge From Below
3 Marsh Flats
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Badlands
2 Bayou
4 Strip Mine
1 Gemstone Mine
3 Reanimate
3 Entomb
4 Duress
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
A transformational sideboard to take care of opposing aggro decks and control decks. Extremely soft to combo. Midrange decks may still be in their favor preboard, but ours in the post. Putrid Imp gets rid of land cards to take advantage of Scrivener and can fly over the top, Troll is just a trampling beater that is hard to take care of. I included reanimate to help with the loss of creatures to troll and to bring back Gravecrawler on an empty board, or to kill creatures with Fleshbag. Entomb and Bridge is awesome and makes for some serious CA with Clamp. I wanted to include Strip Mine just because. Probably THE worst thing in this build, due to color requirements. I thought about using Life From the Loam somehow for a land lock out, but couldn't fit it. The lands are the way they are because they are ported from my Legacy deck, The Walking Dead, but if I could switch the numbers with Badlands and Bayou I would.
Lotlith troll
Vengevine
bloodghast
gravecrawler
etc.
Discard and pump cheap recurrable dudes. I know not pure zombies but any ideas?
4 Carrion feeder
4 Festering goblin
4 Undead warchief
4 Gempalm polluter
4 Shepherd of rot
4 Fleshbag marauder
3 Maggot carrier
2 Graveborn muse
3 Grave pact
2 Oversold cemetery
// Mana (26)
4 Dark ritual
18 Swamp
4 Unholy grotto
If Pact if your goal, reusable sac fodder is something to be desirable.
Abilities like Undying (such as Geralf's Messenger), persist (or give them with Cauldron of Souls), unearth (like Viscera Dragger); or simply using creatures that can return by themselves like Vielborn Ghoul, Ghastly Remains, Gravecrawler, Ashen Ghoul; or even retrievers like Ghoulraiser, Gravedigger, or Grave Scrabbler.
There are some cards that seems not to fit in the deck like Polluter (that with the sacrifice theme, odds are that you won't have much creatures out), Shephard of Rot (same reason as Polluter + that as you're the slow side of the table, and chances are that you will be behind on the life race, so using him might be a non go).
Soullless One might be your beater, but with all that sac, Feeder or Husk should be huge, so i'd prefer to use a evasion enabler like Zombie Master + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, or Zombie Trailblazer, to allow some pumped dead head to beat to death opponent, since beater won't be a missing slot.
Finally, you might like to use Vengeful Dead, since it fits here, as an alternative wincon.
Fleshbag Marauder and Corpse Harvester, seems to fit the deck strategy as well.
I'm in a rush right now, but maybe something like this:
20 Swamp
04 Barren Moor
// CREATURES (26)
04 Carrion Feeder
04 Festering Goblin
04 Nantuko Husk
04 Gravedigger
04 Fleshbag Marauder
03 Corpse Harvester
01 Noxious Ghoul
01 Vengeful Dead
01 Zombie Trailblazer
04 Duress
03 Cauldron of Souls
03 Grave Pact
20 Swamp
4 Unholy grotto
// Zombs (23)
4 Carrion feeder
4 Rotlung reanimator
4 Undead warchief
3 Nantuko husk
3 Withered Wretch
3 Gempalm Polluter
2 Graveborn Muse
4 Smother
4 Duress
3 Grave pact
2 Oversold Cemetery
Nice choice with Oversold Cemetery, i'd even drop muse and up this to 3.
Duress and Smother are a nice, and mostly necessary, touch.
W. Wretch seems more a meta call to me, its is useless against decks that will not deal with their grave, like most. I feel that a Butcher Ghoul would have more use to you on the 2cmc spot. 2x1 kills and/or pump.
I'd change with:
+1 Oversold Cemetery
+4 Butcher Ghoul
-2 Muse
-3 Wretch
2 Putrid Imp
3 Blood Scrivener
4 Lotleth Troll
2 Death Baron
1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped
1 Geralf's Messenger
3 Fleshbag Marauder
4 Aether Vial
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Entomb
1 Reanimate
4 Skullclamp
1 Bridge From Below
3 Marsh Flats
3 Verdant Catacombs
3 Badlands
2 Bayou
4 Strip Mine
1 Cavern of Souls
3 Reanimate
3 Entomb
4 Duress
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Just some changes I wanted to update with you guys.
Sac theme with killing wave and tragic slip, but only messenger and gravecrawler to sort of benefit from it, making gempalm less effective.
At the same time you have a token production package that will die for killing wave, and will make shepherd of rot unusable, at the risk of killing yuorself in the process.
Dark Ritual has no real usage, and Soulless One suffers from absence of evasion or trampling, which means even a mere 1/1 token could stop a gigantic Soulless.
I believe the first goal here is to choose which route you want to take with the deck: sacrifice, lifeloss, aggro, or control. After that which creatures (inside the strategy) you would really want on it (fun factor).
That answered, will be easier to help you.
To make Loleth Troll worth there are some cards that might help:
Vengeful Pharaoh is a nice discard material (destroy any non-indestructible creature)
Madness Zombies are nice for that job too: Brain Gorgers (conditional removal) and Grave Scrabbler (brings back wasted Troll)
Threshold also works great with a filled grave with Gloomdrifter (mass removal)
Ghastly Remains and Undead Gladiator are recursive
Haakon, Stromgald Scourge also loves grave (works great with Nameless Inversion)
Its not a zombie but works with the core is Filth that + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth gives your creatures evasion.
Ditch: Diregraf Ghoul, Putrid Leech, Geralf's Messenger and Cemetery Reaper (you plan to beef Feeder and Troll to beat), and add some of the cards above, all will provide you some benefit on discarding for troll.
Use 4 Haakon since you'll want it in your hand every game, and you can discard all 4, just can't cast more than 1.
You won't loose consistency because you'll have a nice cmc curve with threat drop on every turn.
Maybe:
12 Swamp
04 Woodland Cemetery
04 Overgrown Tomb
04 Llanowar Wastes
04 Gravecrawler
04 Loleth Troll
04 Stromgald Crusader
04 Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
03 Blood Scrivener
03 Putrid Imp
02 Vengeful Pharaoh
04 Abrupt Decay
04 Nameless Inversion
04 Duress
Alas I felt WotC has turned black into a support color but then after play testing some of these zombies deck, it inspired new hope for me (Goodjob on the Primer!)
I threw some cards together and came up with this
4 Gravecrawler
4 Carrion Feeder
4 Stromgald Crusader
2 Gempalm polluter
3 Blood Scrivener
4 Lord of the Undead
2 Cemetery Reaper
2 Fleshbag Marauder
3 Nameless Inversion
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
Lands (20)
17 Swamp
2 Unholy Grotto
1 Cabal Coffers
So the idea was to take a previous black deck I had and kinda just keep the discard shell and insert the creatures. I tried to keep the curve somewhat consistent and max out around 3cc but is that the right call?
Is it worth expanding to 4cc?
Should I toss in more lords? like death baron? I like the guy but I feel it may be possible to end the game before death touch becomes a necessity
O btw this deck is for casual use
Would it be wrong to toss in a singleton of necropotence just for the those times you can get into the play turn 1
4x Ancient Ziggurat
4x Cavern of Souls
4x Maze of Ith
4x Reflecting Pool
1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
2x Unholy Grotto
4x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
//Artifacts (8):
4x Æther Vial
4x Umezawa's Jitte
4x Diregraf Ghoul
4x Gravecrawler
4x Tidehollow Sculler
4x Glissa, the Traitor
3x Phyrexian Crusader
4x Grave Defiler
3x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
//Instants (3):
3x Nameless Inversion
3x Engineered Explosives
3x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Gilded Drake
3x Phyrexian Revoker
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thoughts?
4x gravecrawler
4x liliana's reaver
4x undead warchief
2x gristle grinner
1x stronghold assassin
4x Cabal Therapy
4x Dark Ritual
2x Essence Harvest
3x Dark Prophecy
4x Sarcomancy
15x swamp
4x unholy Grotto
4x Ancient Ziggurat
4x Cavern of Souls
4x Maze of Ith
4x Reflecting Pool
1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
2x Unholy Grotto
1x Urborg
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
//Artifacts (10):
4x Æther Vial
4x Umezawa's Jitte
2x Sword of Fire and Ice
4x Gravecrawler
4x Putrid Leech
4x Tidehollow Sculler
4x Glissa, the Traitor
4x Phyrexian Crusader
4x Grave Defiler
3x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
4x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Gilded Drake
2x Phyrexian Revoker
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3x Reclamation Sage
2x Balduvian Fallen
4x Black Cat
2x Blood Scrivener
4x Bojuka Bog
2x Brainbite
2x Carrion Feeder
4x Cemetery Reaper
1x Chill of Foreboding
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Darkwater Catacombs
4x Diregraf Captain
2x Dralnu, Lich Lord
4x Drowned Catacomb
3x Déjà Vu
2x Glimpse the Unthinkable
4x Lich Lord of Unx
4x Siren of the Silent Song
2x Swamp
2x Zombie Apocalypse
4x Ancient Ziggurat
2x Bojuka Bog
4x Cavern of Souls
4x Maze of Ith
4x Reflecting Pool
2x Unholy Grotto
3x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
//Artifacts (10):
4x Æther Vial
4x Umezawa's Jitte
2x Sword of Feast and Famine
4x Gravecrawler
4x Relentless Dead
4x Tidehollow Sculler
4x Glissa, the Traitor
4x Phyrexian Crusader
4x Grave Defiler
3x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
2x Bojuka Bog
4x Ethersworn Canonist
3x Gilded Drake
3x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
3x Reclamation Sage
I think it's fun to play against aggro and control and even to some extent in multiplayer,
but too slow and not enough disruptive versus combo, hence casual.
Do you have any ideas about new decks with Relentless Dead?